9/13/2005

Venti Sizing the Church

Brother Maynard has a very insighful post that will get you started thinking about church size and satellite churches.

A few of his points about megachurches worth contemplating:

"Megachurches are well suited to the 'bootstrap theology' of the word-faith set, where a 'bigger, better, faster, more' mentality would seem to be right at home. If you think that one of the reasons to be part of a church has to do with networking for your business, this is the place for you. "

"If you feel that your calling is to provide a place for already-christians to get together in a contemporary fashion so their needs can be met in the newest ministry model, then there’s nothing wrong with doing it well so you can gather these people and Maslow the Hell out of them. I promise I won’t embarass you by asking you for chapter-and-verse to support your calling. Just don’t call that the Great Commission, and please don’t keep talking about the numbers and the endless ministries and all the campuses — frankly, I don’t care."

Bro. Maynard then interacts with Andy Stanley's contention that a church must be big enough to sustain Jr High and Sr High ministries: "I continue to wonder about the idea of youth church or a parachurch group or jointly-sponsored group (as described in 4a above) that provides this outlet. Clearly we aren’t there yet… but is it something that’s advisable and attainable?"

"...the churches in the time of the Apostles were all house churches, and that there’s nothing wrong with that model....we’ve come so far from the mindset of embracing the small that we actually have to argue it’s validity. Sad."

"Church size - maybe there’s nothing wrong with a MegaVenti church… but I might want to see it divided and poured into about 18 cups so that it can spread out and shared properly."